Hen Coding
Another day, another thousand dollars. I wish I could be a millionaire, but unfortunately the United States doesn’t grant citizenship nor bank accounts to, uh, “poultry.” You and I are animals yet we don’t share the same rights and protections from our government. Strange, no? Even stranger: we used to be gods. Why do you think there are so many bird statues and cave paintings with bird people? We’re, like, unique. And as a hen, one of the only birds that can’t fly, I know that I nourish the world. There’d be no civilization with the hen and her eggs. Penguins? They’re fine for selling books, chocolate, and living in a “Random House,” but what have they ever done for you? Have any of you ever even had penguin? It’s disgusting. So gamey. And tough. They look pudgy but have absolutely no soft underbelly, it’s all grit.
Again, disgusting. But they get to live in the Arctic and have documentaries made about them where Morgan Freeman talks about how majestic they are. Meanwhile, we’re stuck with people like Morgan Spurlock and Richard Linklater; the latter’s Fast Food Nation was so dull, it killed any momentum the moderately successful book had in the early-2000s. And the “fat acceptance movement” the following decade just made everything worse for us birds—even the penguins. Why was overeating and obesity now a status symbol? It made no sense, but then again I’d seen humans struggle to make sense out of their craziness for many centuries, and while on one hand it surprised me, on the other it was totally expected and, sadly, inevitable.
The final mix of SATUR-19 is almost done. I’m looking at an assembly cut I mixed yesterday, and I’m making notes. It’s amazing, reassuring, and kind of depressing that this experience is apparently the norm: director and cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld confirms in his two memoirs that “everything in the film industry gets finished at the last minute.” He writes about mixing both Addams Family movies for weeks at a time, 16-hour days, catching naps in the screening room. That’s where we’re at. Da Boss and I are completely fried. There are a couple of final necessities that need to be taken care of—that’s why they’re necessary—and Da Boss perversely decides to leave these kinds of necessities until the very end: crossfades, color timing, shots that run too long. I really don’t know why he does it.
“It keeps the thing alive,” he said. “When I haven’t applied essential sound to a shot in the first 10 minutes of the movie, it means I can keep working on the parts of the movie that look finished but could become better. It means I always have something I must return to; the other stuff I could shrug off, but I know I don’t want to in the long run.”
So should I apply all of those “necessities” that have yet to be put in?
“Hmmm…. Maybe tomorrow.”
I hope by the time this is published, Da Boss will have agreed to finish the movie, and we’ll be home and dry, and, finally, sleeping.
—Follow Monica Quibbits on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits